Top Firms in the A/E industry have different marketing tactics and results

Press Release: October 18, 2011 FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. (October 18 , 2011) – The fastest growing firms in the design industry are relying on traditional methods to achieve marketing results. According to the ZweigWhite’s 2011-12 Successful Firm Survey of Architecture, Engineering, Planning & Environmental Consulting Firms, both “fast-growth” and “very high-profit firms” rely on more traditional marketing such as phone/telemarketing and mail, and report less success with email marketing than all other firms in the industry when asked which direct marketing method achieves the best results. These successful firms also spend significantly fewer of their marketing dollars on email than all other firms in the industry. For the purposes of this survey, a fast-growth firm was defined as a business that has had an average annual revenue and staff growth of 20 percent or more for the past three years. A very high-profit firm is defined as a company that has had an average annual profitability of 15 percent or more for the past three years. The survey found that while 31 percent of fast-growth firms market by mail, 29 percent market by email, and 26 percent by phone/telemarketing; very high-profit firms report 32 percent of “direct” marketing is done by mail, 36 percent by email, and 20 percent by phone/telemarketing. This did vary from the survey pool of “all firms,” which reported 24 percent by mail, 47 percent by e-mail and 21 percent by phone/telemarketing. How did each marketing strategy pay off? Fast-growth firms achieved greater success with phone/telemarketing than other firms. The majority of fast-growth firms (33 percent) report phone/telemarketing as achieving the greatest results of all their direct marketing efforts. Seventeen percent of fast-growth firms reported mail and another 17 percent reported e-mail, while the remaining 33 percent did not specify. Half of all very high-profit firms were split equally between phone/telemarketing and email, while 13 percent reported mail and 38 percent did not specify. Only 10 percent of all firms reported mail, 32 percent reported phone/telemarketing, and 34 percent reported e-mail. 24 percent of all firms did not specify what form of direct marketing achieved the best results. The 2011-12 Successful Firm Survey of Architecture, Engineering, Planning & Environmental Consulting Firms is a compilation of key topics from several of ZweigWhite’s 2011 management surveys. The survey gathered the facts, figures and commonalities of the industry’s top-performing firms and compared them to a more general sample of all firms. For more information on the 2011-12 Successful Firm Survey of Architecture, Engineering, Planning & Environmental Consulting Firms, visit www.zweigwhite.com/p-1114-successful-firm-survey-2011-2012.aspx.